Background information

First of all I would like to tell why I have chosen this particular subject to graduate on. Let me give a little background information on the course I'm graduating on.

The course "Communication, Multimedia & Design" is a modern course which aims to educate students in the relatively new field of multimedia. The course's primary goal is to ultimately make the student an allround multimedia specialist. The student must steer his own educational process, leading to an area of expertise the student excels at.

During the years I followed the course, I decided to focus on the technical aspects of the course, mainly programming for the web. I'm familiar with (X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, AJAX-techniques, Actionscript 2.0 and Actionscript 3.0, along with a whole set of IDE's and software packages.During my internship I developed an internal bugtracking system for a company that produces softwarepackages, websites and online services for municipalities, for example, automated online live broadcasting of council meetings. It was also while working for this company that I was made aware of accessibility issues on the Internet. Online services should be accessible for anyone who uses them, including people with a disability. Especially when they replace traditional services, which is true for some municipalities. The trend however is clear: as more and more services become available on the Internet, and more and more people use them, traditional services (can) dissappear. Thats reason one that contributed to the decision for the subject.

The second reason: my own personal passion, Housemusic. I will not bore you with the reasons I'm so passionated about Housemusic, but I will tell you why this also has been a main contributing factor. I regularly purchase music for my hobby online. Online stores often give the user the possibility to preview a track in an embedded player on the website. More often than not, these players are developed in Flash. Given the fact I read about accessibility problems with Flash content, it suddenly sprang to my mind: "How accessible are these embedded music players to blind and visually impaired users, for whom audio often plays a more important role in life than users with eyesight?"

After this flash of insight (no pun intended!), I searched the Internet for research on this particular subject. After scanning recent theses and papers related to accessibility, Flash content and music/video-players I decided it was worthwile to devote my graduation to this subject. I really wanted to do something I could put my heart in during my graduation, and this fits the bill quite nicely. I also hope to create more overall awareness of accessibility issues on the Internet, for normal Internet users as well as developers.

In the next post I'll discuss how I'm going to fill in my graduation.